The likely, eventual closure of La Grenouille has some crying into their soufflés and questioning the future of French dining in the city.
It’s the last of the city’s original “Le” and “La” restaurants to close, following Le Hermitage and the original Le Pavillon to the great beyond
But I’m more than OK bidding adieu to La Grenouille, its black tie-clad waiters and all it represented.
The restaurant’s rep says the currently-dark spot on East 52nd Street will reopen on Jan. 24 after a more than three-weeks vacation.
By then, La Grenouille will have been closed for five of the last seven months including a four-month shutdown due to a gas problem in 2023.
What’s more, Le Grenouille owner Phillippe Masson — who wrested control from his brother Charles years ago — has put the five-story, chateau-style property up for sale for $15 million.
Every closing is sad, of course. But there’s too much gloomy “end of an era” talk about the once-fabulous frog, which saw its most fashionable days several decades ago.
In recent years, even the famous floral arrangements were wilting. The average customer age was deceased, the food was overpriced and heavy, and the place had a stuffy, funeral parlor vibe. It lost its mojo years ago when Philippe Masson took over from his hated brother Charles Jr. and turned it into tacky part-time cabaret.
The same moaning and groaning came when Le Cirque, which was equally over the hill, closed in January 2018.
The demise of La Grenouille is an occasion not to mourn, but to celebrate the more modern French spots in the city. There are probably more “Le” and “La’s” — such as Le Gratin, Le Jardinier, Le Rock, Le Coucou and Daniel Boulud’s great new Le Pavillon — than ever before.
Le Bernardin chef/owner Eric Ripert calls French dining in New York “a phoenix that rose from the ashes.” After being written off in the 1990s and the aughts by Asian-obsessed critics and customers, French fare is now thriving in the city, from Ripert’s three-Michelin-star icon to neighborhood Brooklyn bistros such as the delightful French Louie on Atlantic Avenue.
“You had the old guard of La Cote Basque, Le Perigord, La Grenouille and several others,” Ripert said. “But they gave way to the new guard — Jean Georges, Daniel, and Le Bernardin. Now we have Essential by Christophe on the Upper West Side. Keith McNally used the French model for Balthazar and Pastis. There are French bistros in Brooklyn and the Bronx.”
I remember La Cote Basque all too well. It was fun to be taken to its original East 55th Street location by wealthy friends who received VIP treatment. It was a different story when I went on my own and was relegated to a dark corner. For good measure, the house specialty, pike quenelle, was a deflated heap of fish and cream.
Today’s French and French-inspired spots are more democratic and infinitely more varied than snooty old-school joints where sauces only slightly less viscous than brake fluid were considered radical. They practice regional styles and techniques once rare in the Big Apple if they could be found at all, such as Toulouse-inspired Le Sirene and Alsatian Gabriel Kreuther.
So, au revoir, La Grenouille. Long live its great successors from cheap to extravagant, and with more Gallic elan than a big bouquet of drooping flowers.
